Encore
by subtextual
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri is a twenty-three year old dime-a-dozen musician in the United States. He just finished last, in sixth place on the TV show,i Grand Prix Voice Finals/i, and has just returned home in disgrace. When he performs a cover of Viktor Nikiforov's hit single, "Stay Close to Me", and it accidentally goes viral, Yuuri finds everything he has ever known challenged. [AU]


_**Encore**_

 **Written by subtextual**

 **Edited by powerandpathos**

* * *

 **Disclaimer:** This is a semi-retelling of _Yuri! On Ice_ through competitive music. Some dialogue in this chapter is lifted directly from the anime and re-used for the purpose of the narrative, and belongs to Kubo-sensei.

Please check out the glossary at the end of the chapter if you have any difficult with the terms.

To listen to _Encore_ 's OST, please visit me at AO3 at sub_textual

* * *

 _"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."_ \- John Taylor

* * *

There's nothing quite like the roar of a crowd in the moments before it all begins.

It's the sizzle and crack of lightning across the sky in the midst of a storm, the promise of thunder trembling just in the distance. You know what's coming, and waiting for it is like breathing electricity, made up of a thousand voices, coalescing in a single wave that rises towards the sky. It's dizzying, exhilarating, terrifying all at once. A little like rediscovering what it means to be alive.

The stage breathes, pulses with light, color bursting kaleidoscopic and bright, blinding in intensity. It's hard to know where to look — at the lights that carve across the stage, leaving behind dazzling strokes of a luminous brush in the haze hanging heavy in the air, or the geometric shapes of contrasting color exploding from the video wall. The colors seem to dance with each heavy thump of bass reverberating the stomps of feet whenever the crowd rises into the air and falls.

The entire venue shakes, vibrates with a breathless intensity.

He stands in the eye of the storm, feels the weight of one thousand voices pressing against his skin. They're waiting, all of them, for this. For him. Impossibly, somehow, to hear him open his mouth and let his voice take flight. It feels like a dream, hearing his name on their tongues. His name, reverberating between synthetic notes and the wail of an electric guitar.

 _YUU-RI. YUU-RI. YUU-RI._

Louder and louder, a dizzying crescendo.

The lights burst open and, one by one, his dancers slide apart in a single smooth motion as the spotlight goes on, blindingly bright. For a moment, the world fades away. There's nothing but the spotlight and Yuuri and the roar of voices crushing in all around him.

Yuuri tries to remember how to smile. He takes a breath, steps forward into the light, and opens his mouth.

* * *

Yuuri slams his laptop shut with shaky hands, his breath coming out of him like a slowly deflating balloon as he rests his forehead against the desk. The surface is cool and calming against his burning cheek. He should stay here like this, he thinks, cheek to desk, not doing much of anything else. Maybe he can become one with the desk. Maybe he doesn't have to think about the fact that he, Yuuri Katsuki, wanted a record deal so badly, that he competed in _Grand Prix Voice_ and, in the finals, ended up failing spectacularly.

He didn't even manage to make the top three, voted off the show in sixth place disgrace. His final performance: a travesty. He wishes he could forget it. Wishes he had the power to undo it, so that it never happened.

In front of a celebrity panel of judges in a packed house televised to thirty million people, he somehow managed to forget lyrics and sang all his high notes flat, like there were fingers around his throat, and with every breath he took and every note he sung, the grip grew tighter until it was unbearable.

His performance was so stunningly terrible that his manager had thought that his in-ear monitors had gone out. From his place on stage, he could see Celestino rushing towards the monitor engineer, arms waving wildly. Screaming over the intercom, hand pushing the mouthpiece towards his face, as though the proximity of the microphone to his shouting mouth would be enough to fix every mistake Yuuri was making.

Yuuri's in ears worked just fine. He could hear his music, he could hear himself, but most of all, he could hear his voice echoing in his ears, brash and loud and terrible.

If only it were the in ears, he could have asked to restart due to a technical failure. He could have taken it from the top. But he stepped out on the stage and the spotlight went on, and all Yuuri could think about wasn't his music at all, or the fact that there were at least twenty A&R agents in the room, but the roar just beyond, a relentless tidal wave slamming him down into a riptide that effortlessly, devastatingly, stole his breath away and locked up his vocal chords.

When he opened his mouth, what came out wasn't his voice, but something strained and fraught with tension, tremulous in all the wrong ways.

As if he needed to sabotage his own performance even more, he began making mistakes in his choreography, stepping out when all of his dancers stepped in. Spinning too early. Missing every single cue, like he had forgotten how his feet should move or where to place his arms or hips or how to gyrate to the downbeats in a way that wasn't completely, utterly awkward. He was supposed to exude confidence and sensuality, possessing the grace of a jaguar moving through the forest at night. Instead, he had about as much grace as a dying fish gasping for its last breath, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

The look Celestino gave him as he walked off stage after the vote is something he will never forget.

The disappointment was a shuddering, sinking weight falling to the bottom of him.

"What happened, Yuuri?" Celestino asked, his voice carefully reined in, but Yuuri could hear the horror at the edges just the same.

I happened, Yuuri wanted to say. _I should have known better than to think I could win._

"I'm sorry," was all he managed to say in the end. The unblinking eye of the spotlight, as it followed his walk of shame off the stage, left a sensation like burning in his eyes.

Or, maybe, that was just the tears.

* * *

Haselton in winter is a quiet, brooding thing.

A small, sleepy town tucked along the Narragansett Bay, few things happen here in the dead of winter, when the snow drifts sometimes grow as high as rooftops, and the white of waves are more ice than ocean froth. During the summer, Haselton finds itself overrun with tourists, who seem determined to claim every corner of the town as their own. Vacationers air out their summer homes along the shore, trading skyscrapers and humid subways for sky and sand and blue, blue water. They stroll along the small cobblestone streets of the town center, chewing on salt taffy and licking melting ice cream cones. The din of their voices is loud and incessant and reaches even the edge of town, where Yuuri lives in a small, white clapboard house with his parents and his sister, that they operate as a bed and breakfast with its own Japanese-style restaurant.

They live a quiet life, the four of them, in their small town where nothing ever happens in winter, and where no one recognizes him when he walks down Main Street to his part-time job at Castille de Glace, the only five star hotel in town. Yuuri had gotten the job when he was only sixteen, after Tom Bachmann, the owner of the hotel, happened by chance to hear him play.

"How would you like a job, kid?" Tom had asked, his face rough like leather, tanned from the sun, even though the white that swirled on the ground outside was more snow than sand. His teeth were a startling white against his bronze complexion. "You got real talent. We could use a piano player like you in the hotel lobby."

Yuuri stared at him like the sun had dropped out of the sky and fell into Tom's hands. His jaw fell slack, eyes so wide they hurt. It was a little like the feeling he had when the board of judges informed him that he had won his first piano competition. At eight years old, the idea of winning seemed an impossible thing.

This was only a small part-time job, playing piano in a hotel lobby, for guests who barely listened. But for Yuuri, it was his future. A small glimpse of the dream he only barely grasped a number of times, in the quiet applause at piano recitals and competitions, and in the breathless, brilliant smile Viktor Nikiforov flashed from a stage far larger and higher than any Yuuri had ever stepped foot on.

The piano in a hotel lobby could maybe, one day, lead to the piano at the Boston Blue Note, where Viktor had played a mesmerizing show at the tender age of fourteen, despite not nearly being old enough to enter through the front door as a patron. That was where he had been discovered by Yakov Feltsman, who saw in Viktor something far greater than jazz clubs and Carnegie Hall, where Viktor often performed classical concertos with full orchestras. He saw platinum records; he saw arenas. He saw the world cradled in the palm of Viktor's hand. And he saw himself, guiding him.

Within a year, Viktor Nikiforov had effortlessly risen from dominating classical and jazz competition circuits to dominating Billboard and music charts around the world. He won five Grammys for his debut album, swept the awards season, and his concerts grew from small clubs to large theaters that held thousands of people. Yuuri had watched his star rise, staying up far too late on school nights on the family computer, watching grainy bootleg videos of Viktor's music videos and live performances, over and over again. He sat close to the screen, breath catching in his throat, every time Viktor's fingers did something he didn't expect. Surprise washed over him endlessly, as though Viktor knew that he was listening and wanted to catch him off guard with an unexpected melody, or an artful turn of phrase. He wanted to absorb every beat of Viktor's music, his performance, his very essence, into the molecules of his being.

He bought every single, every album, the day that it came out, and listened to every second of it with his childhood best friend, Yuuko. They would pop the CD into the old, dusty stereo system in the Katsuki living room and listen to Viktor's music together, his voice as clear as a warm spring day cutting through the still of a New England winter. The music swelled, and Viktor's voice climbed with it, so high, it threatened the stars, and twelve-year-old Yuuri thought to himself, this must be what love feels like.

The day is bitingly cold, the kind that goes down to the bones. It's the kind of cold everyone wants to look out at with cups of steaming hot chocolate pressed between two hands; a startling difference from the dry heat of Los Angeles Yuuri had run away from three months ago. Christmas and the New Year had come and gone, and Yuuri had barely noticed, spending most of his time locked up in his room, cheek to desk, contemplating whether he should take down Viktor's posters, which had once served as a source of inspiration and focus, but now felt like an ever-present reminder of his defeat. The rest of the time, he spent at his parents' restaurant, eating bowl after bowl of katsudon drenched in tonkatsu sauce to fill up the empty space music had once filled in his life.

"It'll be okay, Yuuri. You did your best," his mother had said, when he came home from Los Angeles. He sees in her eyes the same thing he saw when he left: hope, that perhaps her son had finally come to his senses about his frivolous dream in music, and will finally settle down like Mari, to help her run the family business.

Eventually Yuuri returned to his old job at Castille de Glace — a legitimate excuse to not work at Yu-topia Katsuki Restaurant and Inn.

He can barely even remember a before, anymore. What it felt like, when he thought he could touch the sky. When the stars themselves didn't seem so far away, and the possibility of one day sharing a stage with Viktor Nikiforov seemed more a question of when than how. Now, all he has is this: an empty hotel lobby, an old piano with a creaky bench, music that is not his own.

The wind outside scrapes across the windows. It is mournful, and it sounds like loss.

Yuuri is thankful that the cold somehow chased away everyone's memory of him on television. He'd rather be forgotten than remembered for what happened that day, when he flew too close to the sun.

* * *

As much as Yuuri had wanted to hide from the world, and everyone he had ever known, it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. It happens rather unexpectedly on a Tuesday, at the grocery store, somewhere between the onions and potatoes. He had been selecting a few onions for dinner, when suddenly, a pair of arms circled in around his shoulders, a slight, soft frame pressing flush against his back.

Startled, Yuuri drops the onions, just as an all-too-familiar voice excitedly exclaims into his left ear, "Yuuuuuri!"

Yuuri winces, and somehow manages to glance over his shoulder, to discover his former piano teacher, Minako, hanging over his back. The cold has made her cheeks ruddy and red, her smile wide and bright. His own is mild, when he remembers to smile, and manages to stumble out, in Japanese, "A-ah! Mi-Minako-sensei. It's been a while."

Minako's arms slip back from around his shoulders, and Yuuri tries not to show his relief when she peels herself from his back. He watches as she props one hand on her hip. "I _heard_ you had come home," she says, "but I couldn't believe it. I thought to myself, _surely_ he would have come by to say hello if he really was here." Her look turns sly. "But here you are, and it seems I didn't even get a visit!"

Yuuri hates confrontations. It's why he spent most of his days since his return trying to fade into relative obscurity, so that he wouldn't have to swallow down the looks everyone would certainly give him. He still carries Celestino's within him, anchored deep in the mud of three months ago. "I'm sorry," he says, his head hanging low. "I haven't really had much of a chance to visit anyone."

"When did you get back?" Minako asks, very expectantly, and Yuuri feels the floor drop out under his feet. It's not all unlike the way he felt on stage, the unblinking eye of the spotlight watching him too closely.

"Um…" Yuuri says, as he tries to find an easy exit out of the truth. But he can't simply depart stage left and leave Minako standing all alone in the middle of the onions and potatoes. Nor can he lie about how long it's been, even if that would be the easiest path out of this. It's a little like standing on train tracks, a freight train hurtling right at him, and Yuuri can't even move a single muscle in his body to stop the inevitable. Minako's eyes are too bright. Yuuri has to look away. He focuses on the onions, gathering up the ones he had dropped when she hugged him. "...back in December."

Yuuri doesn't have to look at Minako to know the shock in her eyes, the smile on her face fading like the last rays of the sun. He braces himself when she finally finds her voice. "Three months?!" Apparently, Minako's outrage needed to be accompanied by a well-placed smack to Yuuri's right shoulder. He makes a show of rubbing it. "You've been back all this time, and not even a word?"

Maybe he should have lied to her, after all, he thinks. If he had only done that, she wouldn't be so angry at him, hurt that he'd been here all along, and apparently, didn't want to see her. _It's not true,_ he wants to tell her. _I just don't know how to stand before you anymore. I don't know if I even can._ She had been there for as long as he could remember, teaching him, encouraging him, believing in him when almost no one else did. For years, it had just been Minako, Yuuko, and his sister. The warmth of their cheers and their encouragement carried him through competitions, recitals, and eventually, to the _Grand Prix Voice._

He never even would have had the courage to make the leap from classical to pop, or graduated college with a degree in music, had it not been for Minako's steady reassurance that if Viktor Nikiforov could do it, so could he.

How was he supposed to face her? He had left Haselton five years ago, confident that when he returned, it would be with a record deal. Even if he didn't win the competition, he should have at least come home with something to show for his effort. But, all he has is the heaviness he carries within his chest, which has sunken into his flesh, his waistline soft and expanded, clothes fitting him far too tightly.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, not knowing what to say, or the expression he must carry on his face, because Minako's arm suddenly is slinging around his neck again, and it feels like forgiveness he hasn't earned. "Well, I suppose it's no big deal," she says warmly. "What's another three months, when you've been gone for five years?" Minako's laughter is a bright, wondrous thing in his ears, but it makes the ache inside of him that much worse. Her look suddenly turns conspiratorial. "Yuuri, you owe me many, many drinks. I hope you brought your wallet, because it's gonna be your treat~!"

They end up at at Rousseau's, Minako's favorite sports bar down the street. Yuuri suspects Minako's fondness for Rousseau's has something to do with the fact that the bartenders let her watch figure skating on television screens usually reserved for football.

"Ah~h. Can you imagine yourself ever doing that?" Minako asks over a draft lager and a huge plate of chips, and Yuuri follows her gaze to the television screen to watch as the skater effortlessly leaps into the air, his body tight and spinning beautifully in flight before he lands on one foot, arms outstretched in a glide.

"I'd probably look pretty silly, if I tried," Yuuri says. He can't imagine ever being coordinated enough to do anything quite as difficult as ice skating, when he couldn't even remember how to dance on stage. He remembers the way his legs and arms felt, like appendages that were outside of himself, when he stood on a surface made of wood and black paint. On ice, he could only imagine the way he would look, stumbling, limbs akimbo. The fall would hurt, bruising soft skin.

Minako hasn't mentioned _Grand Prix Voice_ yet, and Yuuri nervously drinks half his beer before he even realizes how light the glass is. If she's still angry at him, Yuuri can't tell anymore, because she has a misty look in her eyes as she watches the skater dance across the ice, her delicate chin propped in her hand. There's a faint smile on her face, like she knows a secret he doesn't.

"I don't know, Yuuri," Minako finally says. "I think you'd make a pretty great skater, if that was what you wanted." Her eyes are twinkling, and Yuuri has a feeling that he knows what she's about to say next. He grips his glass a little harder. "You can do anything you set your mind out to do, as long as you work hard and don't give up, even if you don't always succeed the first time."

But that's just the thing—Yuuri doesn't know if he wants to work hard anymore. He's tired in a way he's never been, the rust of exhaustion heavy on his bones, dragging all the muscles of his body down in one place. He can barely get himself up out of bed to walk the ten minutes to Castille de Glace, so that he can move his fingers in some semblance of a performance, let alone think about _working hard._

He's spent his entire life working hard, chasing after Viktor Nikiforov's shadow, but all that hard work didn't amount to much, when he was standing up on that stage alone.

"I don't think I'm going to give it another shot, Minako-sensei," Yuuri quietly admits after a moment, staring at the bottom of his glass. "Maybe… maybe I found my limit. Not everyone's cut out for the big leagues. Besides, I'm getting too old…"

"Too old?" Minako half-scoffs, half-laughs. "Yuuri, you're only twenty-three. Viktor Nikiforov was the same age when he won his first _Grand Prix Elite_ —"

"I'm not Viktor, okay?!"

The words unleashed, Yuuri's gaze snaps up from his glass to Minako's face. He flinches at the tightness around her eyes. She must have been taken aback by the way his voice had sounded in that moment — the loud bitterness of it, cutting something sharp out of round syllables. "I—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. It's just… Viktor had a record deal when he was fourteen, and by the time he felt like competing, he already had more Grammys under his belt than most people have in a lifetime." Yuuri had classical competitions, a YouTube channel no one knows about, and a Soundcloud filled with music no one has ever heard, other than the handful of people in his life who ever seemed to think he could be more than what he is.

"I'm not Viktor," he says again, his voice soft and full of defeat, as he eyes the last of his beer.

"No, you're not Viktor," Minako finally agrees after a moment. "You're Katsuki Yuuri. You're the hardest, most talented musician I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. And you know what's great about you, Yuuri?"

 _Nothing_ , he thinks. Absolutely nothing.

"You never give up," Minako says, her tone a declaration. Yuuri doesn't know how she can have so much faith in someone like him.

* * *

Sometimes, Yuuri wonders if everyone else knows him better than he knows himself.

He had been so sure, when he had come back to Haselton, that he would never feel the urge to return to music fully. He felt washed up, washed out, done. At twenty-three years old, he had squeezed every ounce of hope and love for music out of his blood, and all that he had left was a shell of himself. He was all fingers, but no voice and no heart. Fingers that moved without thought or direction, forming sound he heard, but didn't feel anymore.

Eventually, Yuuri gets tired of playing music that only moves his fingers, but not the rest of him.

He finds himself missing it, the feeling that used to fill him when he performed. The bright, shivery thing in his chest that felt like flying, like he could jump off the highest precipice and rise with the currents. In the moments between putting his fingers to the keys and opening his mouth to sing that feeling aloud, he felt more alive than in any other moment. He could do anything, be anyone, even stand on the same stage as Viktor Nikiforov. The possibilities were limitless, and hope sprung eternal.

Though Yuuri doesn't know if he can ever quite capture that feeling again, he misses feeling the music. Letting it fill him so completely until there was nothing else but the music inside of him, and the cool feeling of keys beneath his fingertips. Winter would sit outside of him, somewhere where the cold could never reach. Inside, he would be warm, surrounded by the security of song, and only concerned with perfecting the next arpeggio or note sequence. Practicing even the most difficult pieces until his fingers and wrists ached, and his shoulders and back felt stiff and tight with the exertion of being hunched over a piano for so many long, unforgiving hours.

You never give up, Minako had said, and apparently, she was right, because Yuuri finds himself wanting. And the thing about want is that it's dangerous, the way it so quietly slips inside you when you least expect it. Yuuri had closed himself up, determined to never want to feel music again in his life, but here he is, three months later, wanting.

He ends up at Haselton Music Center, where he and Yuuko had spent hours as children, playing Viktor's songs together on the shop's pianos. Since Yuuri's parents couldn't afford a real piano for him to practice on when he was young, Yuuri spent hours in the store. He practiced piano anywhere he could — in the back room of the record shop, surrounded by old records; in the music room of his elementary school; and in Haselton Music Center, which held some of his most treasured memories.

The shop staff were always very kind to him, and allowed him to practice for hours, even though they knew that someone so young certainly couldn't afford a piano of his own.

The door chimes with bells when he pushes it open. It's late, past closing, but he can see Yuuko standing at the counter, counting out the day's register.

"Sorry, we're closing!" Yuuko calls over to him as she fusses with the stack of bills in her hands. Even from where he stands in the doorway, some twenty feet away, he can make out the way she worries her lower lip between her teeth, the way she does when she's trying to concentrate. It used to make him blush, watching that innocent gesture.

"Excuse me... " Yuuri says, with a hesitant smile, as he walks up to the counter.

Yuuko continues to count the bills. "I'm sorry, but—" Yuuri watches as she freezes. The surprise in her eyes when she looks up at him feels like dawn rising through the clouds on a grey day. "Yuuri-kun!" she exclaims. The delight in her smile is warm and familiar and feels like home. "It's been so long!"

"It's nice to see you, Yuuko-san," Yuuri says politely, the smile on his face soft and easy.

" _Yuuko-san_?" She sounds almost offended. "Call me Yuu-chan!"

"Ah, sorry!" Yuuri says sheepishly. It'd been so long since he'd seen her in person that he wasn't sure if he could take liberties. Even though they'd kept in touch via Facebook and email, somehow, being face-to-face with her now after so many years feels different. Their edges don't fit quite as perfectly as they once did. Yuuri isn't quite the same person he was when he left for college.

"You came to play, right?" Yuuko asks, and Yuuri can hear the barely-contained edge of excitement in her voice. "Go right ahead."

Yuuri blinks at her. "Eh? Really? Are you sure?"

"You want to practice alone, right?" she asks easily.

Yuuko has always understood him far too well. She seemed to always know what he was thinking or feeling, even before he did, as though she could see inside his mind and make sense of the tangle.

Yuuri's smile is shy and uncertain. "If it isn't too much trouble…"

Yuuko waves a hand. "No trouble at all! After all, how often do I get my own private concert?" Yuuko's easy smile settles in him, steadies him. He feels, suddenly, like he can breathe again. He feels like he could make something worth listening to. Rediscover a part of himself that had been lost, which he didn't know he had been looking for.

His eyes travel to the mahogany Steinway sitting on a raised ledge in the center of the showroom. All these years, and still, no one has purchased his favorite piano in the collection. Yuuri can barely believe his dumb luck, as he closes the distance between himself and the instrument.

The smell of wood polish fills his nose, a familiar, comforting scent that reminds him of rainy afternoons after school spent playing in the showroom, the rhythm of the sky the metronome for his music. Rarely, did he ever find enough courage to play the Steinway, a remarkable work of art crafted in the twenties, that had passed from showrooms to smoky jazz clubs to the creaky wood floors of six-floor walk-ups in Harlem. Back then, the city was wild, bursting with music and color and jazz. Yuuri couldn't imagine what it must've been like to be a musician in a world split in half.

The provenance of the piano is what has made it so difficult to sell; its asking price is worth several times what most people make in a single year. Though it'd passed through many owners, and had been refinished countless times, the Steinway was, at one point in the forties, owned briefly by Thelonius Monk. The thought that one of the best jazz pianists of all time not only touched the instrument, and played upon it, but had also _owned_ it, was always enough to send Yuuri into a quiet, awed shock. He would stare at the piano from the floor of the showroom, scared to touch it, lest he somehow ruin whatever magic it possessed. He was certain there was magic in the grain of the wood, something that he could not access.

Monk had owned the Steinway, played on it. The warm wood knew the salt of his sweat as well as it knew the way he attacked the keys, melodic twists and turns stroking against the strings which he made sing.

Yuuri wouldn't even have known who Thelonius Monk was, or anything about jazz, if it wasn't for the fact that Viktor had performed one of his pieces early in his career. Viktor was always eager to surprise his audience; instead of Rachmaninov, he chose to play "Round Midnight" as his encore for the classical concert he had just performed. It was as shocking as it was unheard of — for a classical musician to spring the wildness of jazz onto an unsuspecting audience. The song was a dissonant, confusing thing that broke all of the rules Yuuri had become so accustomed to in the rigid world of classical music. It was almost like the first time Yuuri heard Viktor play a Bartok concerto, but even then, he was able to find some sort of structure in the madness of it all.

This was different. The notes were wild and clashing, moving and dancing and free and breathing, and at ten years old, Yuuri could not understand how it worked. But then, the _rat-tat-tat_ of the snare drum started tapping in past the sixth measure, and the low, brassy notes of a saxophone began to sing. _Bum-bum-bum_ went the upright bass a moment later, and Yuuri suddenly discovered that music was a thing that was _alive_. It lived and breathed just like him, and it was wonderfully surprising and strange, and his shock was as much awe as it was delight.

Yuuri can count the number of times he'd dared to play the Steinway on one hand. The first time, he had just won his first all-state competition. High on the rush of winning, with a gold medal hanging around his neck, the weight of it so very real and unbelievable all at the same time, Yuuri had come to the shop with Yuuko to celebrate. They were going to tinker on the pianos, play some tunes together, and then go to the record shop to listen to Viktor's first record on pressed vinyl.

Somehow, Yuuko and the shop's employees managed to convince him that he was good enough to play the Steinway — he'd just won the all-state classical piano competition! At eleven years old! Yuuri's head spun with the flattery; he didn't know where to put it, how to hold it properly, how to appropriately react. He thanked everyone for their kindness, but was that enough? It was overwhelming. He suddenly found himself pushed up onto the platform, the Steinway looming impossibly high before him like a mountain he didn't know how to climb. The keys were thrust under his fingers—play something for us, Yuuri!—and he stared at them like he didn't know what they were.

They all expected that Yuuri would play Chopin's _Piano Concerto in E Minor,_ the piece that had won him the competition.

Instead, Yuuri played Viktor's very first single, which had only just been released. Music, suddenly, had settled in him with some understanding he had only then discovered.

Later that afternoon, in the back room of the record store, with hundreds of legendary records crammed in all around him, Yuuri sang Viktor's song for Yuuko. He had wanted to teach her the song, so that they could sing it together. It was something of Viktor's, and they had spent so many years trying to copy Viktor's playing style that it felt only natural for them to share this, too.

But Yuuri had never had a reason to sing before. It was the first time Yuuko'd ever heard him make music with something other than his fingers. You have an amazing voice, she said, and Yuuri couldn't believe she liked what she heard. But he liked what he became, when he sang Viktor's music and felt it under his fingers and deep in his lungs. It was like tiny a part of Viktor's vast universe had finally found its way inside of Yuuri. He could feel the wide-open expanse of space and all of its possibilities. Stars burst into life within him, exploding breathlessly like the music at the tips of his fingers and the tip of his tongue.

Yuuri reverently lets his palm glide over the curved lid that covers the Steinway's ivory keys. The wood is firm and cool under his touch, and gives him focus. Maybe, with Yuuko watching him, he might be able to recover what he had lost on stage three months ago.

Yuuko stands on the floor of the showroom, her eyes gleaming bright as she looks up at him with a faint smile on her face. It's the same expression she used to wear when they crowded together on the bench in the record shop, and Yuuri feels his face heat slightly at the memory.

"I wanted you to hear this," he admits, as his left hand finds its way into position. "I've been practicing it for a while."

He doesn't know if he can recapture the stars, draw them out of their orbits, to pull back into himself. The sky seems so far away now. Even Viktor, whose music and performance he had always held so close to him, feels untouchable.

Yuuri closes his eyes and takes a breath as his right hand settles on the keys. Viktor had performed this song on the last _Grand Prix Elite_ , winning his fifth consecutive championship. It had taken everyone by surprise, that Viktor Nikiforov would eschew the shock and awe of his previous stages. Gone were the twenty-foot-high video wall and multi-level stage; the carbon dioxide cannons and pyrotechnics; the dancers and the live band; lasers and lights; and fly systems that flew Viktor high above the crowd. The _spectacle_ of it all had been stripped away, ground down to just a single grand piano and a solemn spotlight.

It felt like everything Viktor Nikiforov was, bared open. The truth of his soul, split apart for everyone to see on stage. It was everything that Yuuri had wanted to be, and everything that he wasn't and didn't know how to be.

Yuuri knows every beat of this performance. He'd watched it a hundred times, listened to nothing but it for hours, days. Viktor was unbridled grace and power, head bowed elegantly over the keys, fingers perfectly poised. Each rise and fall of his arm pushed the music out of him, into the keys, and through the piano. He did not make music; he became it. His voice possessed a haunting quality to it, and Yuuri wondered how someone like Viktor could have ever known pain in his life. That he could sing such loss with such honesty. That anyone would not want to stay close to him, to stay by his side.

There was a rawness to his voice, the same rawness that tears out of Yuuri when he opens his mouth to sing the first verse. He feels, suddenly, stripped open. Like the music had reached into him and ripped out a part of him he didn't know was still there. He doesn't quite know the desperation of wanting to hold onto someone, hasn't yet experienced the words coming out of his mouth, but he knows what it feels like to be desperate. And he knows the fear of loss. The awfulness of it, how it cleaves you apart.

How could someone like Viktor, who is golden and bright and so very perfect that just looking at him makes Yuuri's eyes hurt sometimes — how could someone like that ever know such an awful feeling? And how could he sing it aloud for the whole world to hear, sing aloud his fear and his desperation, reveal this vulnerable part of him — something Yuuri didn't even know Viktor possessed, or could be — and still have any hope left within him?

Yuuri reaches for it, grasping, fingers rising, falling, dancing across the entire keyboard in sweeping arpeggios, flying towards the sky, before crashing down to earth, dramatic, dark chords booming. Is this how Viktor felt, too? When his arpeggio soared, did he fly like Yuuri? When the counterpoint dropped, did it feel like he was breaking? Yuuri feels like he's drowning, pushed to the bottom of the ocean. The music floods through him, torrential and unforgiving, breaking him down. It unmakes him, undoes him, and Yuuri feels it— feels everything, suddenly, all at once.

He might not understand it, what it means to love someone, like how Viktor sings in this song. But Yuuri knows what it's like to love a thing so much, to want so desperately to hold onto it, with both hands; he knows the fear of losing it, the way it nearly destroyed him, how he almost let it. And he knows hope, hope like he hasn't known or felt in months. And he feels clean and reborn and when he opens his mouth again to sing the last verse, he almost believes the hope in his mouth: _Now I'm ready_.

* * *

Yuuri comes back to himself slowly.

His eyes are watery, the world a watercolor blur around him. He can hear a terrible trembling, an incessant snapping, like he's standing on the faultlines of the earth, and it's breaking apart beneath him. He realizes a moment later: it's the sound of his heart, beating wildly in his chest, syncopated by the percussion of hands in wild applause.

A shriek rings out a moment later, and Yuuri startles in his seat, head swirling to find Yuuko jumping up and down. "That was so cool! Oh my god! That was a perfect cover of Viktor Nikiforov! I didn't know you could still do that! I thought you'd be depressed or something, but look at you go!"

"I was," Yuuri admits out loud for the first time. "But I got bored of being depressed all the time, so I started thinking… that I wanted to get my love for music back. I thought I could remember how it was, when I covered Viktor with you."

Yuuko's expression softens into something like understanding, and Yuuri wants to tell her how grateful he is, and has always been, for her friendship and support. How much he couldn't do this without her. But just as he's about to open his mouth, something warm and wiggly presses up against his legs, and Yuuri jerks back. He nearly falls off the back of the bench, arms flailing wildly before he manages to catch himself, a chorus of giggles emerging from underneath the piano.

Three tiny faces pop up from under the keyboard. One of the girls has her hands on his knees, and Yuuri realizes he can't tell any of them apart at all. Had they been there the entire time? He hadn't even realized anyone else was in the shop other than Yuuko.

At least they seemed to enjoy the performance as much as their mother, even if they're little brats who ask invasive questions Yuuri never knows how to answer.

* * *

The ringing wakes him.

It's well past midnight, and Yuuri had been in bed, dreaming about a katsudon mountain. He would've very happily continued to go on dreaming of conquering that mountain, if it hadn't been for the incessant ringing of his phone. He squints a bleary eye open, and rolls onto his side to paw blindly at the offensive ringing. The face of his digital clock reads 1:04, and the screen of his phone reads _Phichit Chulanont._

Phichit. Yuuri hadn't really heard from him, other than through text message, since he left Los Angeles. He'd met Phichit through Celestino, who had signed the Thai singer for his American debut. Unlike Yuuri, who wasn't much of anyone in the United States, Phichit was already a relatively well-known artist in Thailand. He had a record label that backed him locally, and distribution through Sony BMG. But in the United States, he was about as well-known as Yuuri.

Yuuri feels a flash of concern as he lifts the phone to his ear. Why would Phichit call him so late at night?

"Hello? Phichit?"

"Yuuri! Finally! You picked up!" Phichit's voice sounds edged with urgency, almost desperate. Like he'd been trying to reach Yuuri for some time.

"Is everything okay?" Yuuri asks, cautiously.

"Is everything okay? _Is everything okay?!_ " Phichit repeats it, his voice high and strung and far too excited. "Yuuri! I saw your performance!"

His performance? Yuuri can't imagine Phichit is talking about the trainwreck that was _Grand Prix Voice._

"What performance? What are you—"

"Your 'Stay Close to Me' cover! Yuuri! It's _everywhere_!"

Everything inside of Yuuri stops. He must have heard that wrong, he thinks. Or maybe he's still dreaming. It's impossible. Yuuko was his only audience. And it wasn't even like she was recording. Yuuri had seen her hands; there wasn't a phone gripped in either of them. She had clapped without any obstruction. She had—

"Oh no." Yuuri's voice is a strained whisper, and distantly, he can hear Phichit's bright voice ringing in his ear, and there are words forming, something about how impressed he is with Yuuri, how he can't believe Yuuri could do something like that, how it was like watching Viktor. Doesn't Yuuri know that the video has gone viral? It's everywhere, all over YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Everyone's talking about it, the whole world knows. Everyone saw. The words tumble into one another, a stream of incoherent sound Yuuri can no longer make any sense of, because all he can feel is the horror inside of him, yawning wide.

The triplets must have done it. When he was so wrapped up in the music, lost inside himself, they had stood there and recorded him, and he hadn't known. They must have uploaded the video to YouTube without telling their mother, because Yuuko, _Yuuko_ would never let something like this occur.

There's a distant pinging in his ear, text messages flooding in between Phichit's words, and Yuuri pulls his phone away from his ear to stare at the screen.

He has 102 missed text messages.

Yuuri suddenly wishes the ground could open beneath him and swallow him whole.

He never had meant for his performance to be shown to the world.

It was something vulnerable, and private, and probably riddled with mistakes he hadn't noticed because he was too caught up in the feeling of it all. And now, apparently, it has been put on display, without his consent, in front of the entire world.

"Oh god, Phichit," Yuuri says, his voice stricken with what he feels coiling up inside of him. "What if Viktor sees it?"

Phichit suddenly goes very quiet.

And then he says, "Yuuri, I think he probably already has."

* * *

Moscow in winter is a lively, vibrant thing.

Color explodes off every surface, the entire city bejeweled in light and romance. Couples hold hands as they skate lazy figure eights on ice, surrounded by falling snow. The cold settles upon every surface, breath turning to frost in the air, but a little chill never hurt anyone. Not when there are steaming cups of spiced cider to hold; hot, flaky pirozhki to fill up a hungry belly; and vodka to make the blood warm.

There is also this: a young man with eyes as dark as a storm at night, and a voice like honey poured over a sunrise.

Even through the shitty speakers of an iPhone, the richness of his voice is startling and warm. The skill with which his fingers create music and tease out even the most difficult runs and arpeggios is stunning, enthralling. But it's the rawness of it, the breathless intensity with which he performs, a familiar head bowed over the keyboard, that Viktor Nikiforov can't seem to look away from.

He had received a text in the morning:

 ** _OMG look at this 6th place LOSER tryin 2 be u, its so funny haha. #majorfail_**

Yuri Plisetsky, ever the eloquent one.

(Viktor is always endlessly impressed by the breadth of his vocabulary.)

There was a video attached to the text, but Viktor had a full day of shooting a commercial. He had almost forgotten about it entirely, until his publicist, Julia, called him to inform him that he was trending back home in the states, and had he seen the video yet?

No, not yet, Viktor had said.

Whatever you're doing, stop right now. You have to watch this video, she said, and so he did.

It was the best decision he had made in years.

The second: buying a plane ticket.

* * *

Maybe if Yuuri stays in his room long enough, he will succeed in his goal of becoming one with his desk, and everyone will eventually forget about the existence of the damn video.

He can't imagine what Viktor must think about it. By now, he would have seen it.

Yuuri didn't want to believe Phichit when he said that _everyone_ had seen the video and was talking about it. Surely, he was being hyperbolic. There was no way it could be true. Yuuri didn't want to believe it. He had laid himself bare for the whole world, the secret, most shameful part of him laid fresh to be judged and ridiculed. He couldn't bring himself to open up his social media feeds to verify Phichit's claim, but the ever-growing mountain of text messages was telling. The way the press hounded his family to ask him for a soundbyte, even more so. A local news crew had even shown up at their door, and Mari had lied between her teeth and told them he'd gone to visit family in Hasetsu, Japan. They were welcome to try him there.

The barrage was overwhelming. Yuuri had to call out of work, turn his phone off completely, and lock himself in his room.

That was two days ago.

He doesn't want to know what everyone is saying, the terrible things they must think.

It would be just like what happened after the _Grand Prix Voice_ finale. Yuuri never knew words on a screen could cut so deep.

Minako tried, at one point, to drag him, bodily, out of his room, and failed. Yuuri didn't want to hear her encouragement, all the nice things she had to say about his performance.

He didn't want to talk to anyone about it. He'd much rather forget it ever happened, pretend like it never did.

He can imagine what everyone must be saying, can see it when he closes his eyes:

 ** _Sounds like shit, what a rip off. Terrible cover._**

 ** _I want the last 5 minutes of my life back._**

 ** _Bro must have a serious boner for viktor, look at his face LOLOLOLOL_**

Phichit had said _everyone is talking about it_ , but he certainly didn't say _everyone loves it_ , just that _he_ did. But then, Yuuri could probably record himself screeching like Phichit's pet hamsters, and he would be completely delighted.

Viktor probably despises him.

There was an interview, not too long ago. Viktor had been asked his thoughts about reality television. The look Viktor had given the camera was derision disguised in a blinding smile. "Well," said Viktor, his voice saccharine, "I don't really watch reality shows! I can't say it's a very good use of my time, to spend forty-five minutes watching a show about someone whose only talent is pretending that they're something they're not. I wouldn't say that's particularly inspiring, would you?"

Yuuri fit that a little too well. Viktor must think that this whole thing was engineered, that Yuuri had planned for it to happen. That Yuuri knew the kind of impact it would have. By leveraging Viktor's success, Viktor's music, Viktor's own _performance_ , Yuuri had, overnight, become the talk of the town, the name that was in everyone's mouths. And even if that talk might not be particularly kind, his name had trended for the better half of an entire day alongside Viktor's in the most damning way.

Yuuri closes his eyes and curls into himself on his bed, and he sees Viktor, and he sees himself, and he sees the possibility of ever standing together on the same stage with him dashed against the rocks. He sees the pieces of the dream he had tried to put his hands around, by falling into the sky of Viktor's song. And he sees the awful truth of what he's done, the way he'd bastardized the only thing in his life he'd ever held truly sacred.

He sees the ground, hurtling up to meet him.

This time, he thinks, he'll let it finally happen.

* * *

"Yuuri! How long are you gonna stay in bed, feeling sorry for yourself, huh? Oi, you can't just stay in your room all day." Mari has always had a way of talking that somehow manages to bang down even the thickest, most sturdiest doors.

"Ah, Mari-neechan…" Yuuri mumbles into his pillow, determined to become one with his bed, since his attempt at doing the same with his desk had failed. "Do you have to be so loud?"

"If you can't be bothered to do something useful with your life, you might as well help out with the restaurant." Yuuri winces at the shrillness of Mari's voice, at the smell of tobacco curling under his door. "We're short handed today, because of the snow. Tatsuya's stuck in Newport. Come out and help us."

Yuuri can feel the way Mari anticipates his acquiescence, hearing the way the floorboards creak under her feet when she shifts towards his door. She's probably dropping ash everywhere. If she comes in his room, with that cigarette, his room is going to reek of sour smoke for hours.

"Okay," Yuuri concedes after a drawn-out moment. "I'll come out in a bit."

"Don't take too long," Mari says, and Yuuri thinks he can almost hear approval in her voice.

Overnight, the sky had opened and left behind a snowfall two feet high and powder soft. The world outside is dazzling and white, sunlight gleaming off unbroken surfaces as far as the eye can see. It's quiet, a hush that falls only with the deepest of snows that weighs down even the thickest of branches.

From his window, Yuuri can see his father shoveling snow from the front walkway, and flushes with shame when he realizes that he hadn't been asked to help. That no one, not even Mari, told him that the walkway needed shoveling; apparently, none of the hospitality staff had taken the task upon themselves.

Yuuri gets dressed quickly, making sure to wrap the lower half of his face in a scarf just in case an errant reporter comes passing by. By the time he makes it outside, his father had already finished half the walkway. "Otou-san!" Yuuri calls to him, and the smile Toshiya gives him makes the edge he had been walking on since Phichit called feel a little less jagged.

"Oh, Yuuri!" There it is again — that note of approval he'd heard earlier, this time, in his father's voice. Toshiya's gaze tracks to the shovel in Yuuri's gloved hand. "Here to take over for your old man, huh?"

"Yeah," Yuuri's smile can be heard in his voice as he jogs over, to take over for his father. "You can go back in, I can finish. I think there's a soccer game on television."

"Oh?" His father's eyes glint with barely contained interest. Yuuri knows just how much his father loves the sport; that it's just about the only thing he's ever expressed real interest in, outside of the family business and his once-a-year visits to Hasetsu. "Do you know who's playing?"

"No," Yuuri admits, and his father gives him a good-natured smile, then pats him on the shoulder before he heads back in.

"I'll tell your mother to make you some katsudon," his father calls over to him from the doorway.

The morning air is so cold that the bottom layer of snow hasn't started to melt yet, so the shoveling doesn't end up being quite as bad as it looks.

Yuuri had thought that it was going to be a battle; the snow was so high, it nearly brushed his knees. It was almost like shoveling air, how light the snow felt on Yuuri's shovel.

This isn't so bad, he thinks, as he works his way down the walkway. He can see himself falling into this, into the path his parents had always wanted him to walk. This is the eventuality he had been running away from his entire life; maybe, it's time to stop running, to put his feet down on the ground. He can stop dreaming of the stars, of being able to put his hands around the impossible. He can bury the part of him that was once a small piece of the entire universe, and stand on the small piece of earth his parents had spent their entire lives toiling to build, for himself and for his sister.

The end of the walkway comes much faster than he had expected, and Yuuri turns to look at his work. The path leading back to the bed and breakfast is clear. Yuuri lets his gaze briefly sweep out before him at the road, still obscured by snow. Even if he wanted to run away again, there is no leaving. At least, not anytime soon.

He turns and walks back to Yu-topia, dragging his shovel behind him, and opens the door. Something brown and heavy jumps up at him, and Yuuri staggers back. The ground, slippery and wet beneath his boots, gives no traction, and Yuuri's world tilts as his knees buckle, feet slipping beneath him. Pain shoots through his buttocks and up his lower back, and the heavy thing on his chest slams him onto the ground. Two round, shining black eyes look down at him over a wet, black nose. Yuuri realizes that the brown thing is, in fact, a very large, very cute, very familiar poodle.

"Vicchan?" Yuuri is confused, shocked, and for a moment he forgets that his dog, the one that looked just like Viktor's, the one he _named_ after him, is no longer alive to jump on him.

A large, warm, wet tongue starts to lick his face a moment later, and Yuuri comes back to himself. Remembers: Vicchan's not here anymore. This poodle is so much larger, her weight heavy, pressing on his chest. He remembers when Vicchan used to climb up on him, licking his face. The feeling was nothing like this at all, this heavy thing pushing him down. He doesn't know what to make of it, if this dog really is that heavy, or if it's just all in his head. But the dog is so happy to see him, that he can't help but melt under her kisses. The weight falls away within him, and all he feels is warmth. He pulls his gloves off to bury his fingers in her fur.

"Hey, hey, you can't just kiss strangers like that!" Yuuri grins as he sits up and gently eases the poodle off him, then climbs up onto his feet. Her tail wags furiously as she looks up at him, panting happily. From this angle, Yuuri realizes that she looks just like Viktor's dog. The resemblance is a little uncanny, but Yuuri supposes that most poodles look alike. After all, there was a moment when he saw in this dog the ghost of his own.

"Mari-neechan," Yuuri calls as he closes the lobby door and takes off his snow boots to exchange for indoor slippers, "do you know who this dog belongs to? She's jumping on people. The guests might complain."

"Eh?" Mari emerges from the sitting room, where she had been building a rather sizeable fire in the fireplace. Her eyes fall down on the dog, then back up to Yuuri. Her mouth wavers for a moment, the corner twitching strangely, before it eases into a tight smile. "Oh, I think her owner is in the restaurant," she says lightly, and then turns her back on him. Her hand, when it rises to wave him off, is dismissive. "Go find him there, and tell him to control his dog."

"How am I going to know who he is?" Yuuri asks, just as Mari starts to head back to the fireplace. His question makes her stop in her tracks, and she turns her gaze over her shoulder to look at him.

Maybe, it's a trick of the light, but Yuuri can swear that there's a glint in her eyes. "Trust me," she says, her voice like curling smoke, "you won't miss him."

Yuuri doesn't know why his sister has to be so weird, sometimes. He sighs with exasperation, and then looks down at the poodle, who has taken to sitting down on the floor, her tail still happily wagging. "Come on, let's go find your owner," he says to her, and maybe she understands him, because when he starts to walk towards the restaurant, she follows.

"Ah, I really wish you hadn't jumped on me earlier," Yuuri says, when each step he takes twinges with a dull, throbbing ache deep in his glutes. He's probably going to have a nasty bruise there, tomorrow. The poodle just pants in response, trotting alongside him, blithely unconcerned. "Well," he says, after staring at her a moment, "I guess you're very cute, so you're forgiven."

The poodle just wags her tail, and then picks up her pace, running ahead of him to the open doorway of the restaurant.

Yuuri follows her in a moment later.

Yu-topia Japanese Restaurant is a small, cozy restaurant that evokes the authenticity of a Hasetsu ryokan, built off the side of the bed and breakfast. Yuuri's parents had fitted it with a tatami floor, which requires patrons to remove their shoes before stepping up from the large genkan onto the raised floor. Low, wooden tables and plush, silk cushions line the interior; the ones hugging the walls are sectioned off by shoji screens that slide shut for privacy. There is a long sushi bar set towards the back of the establishment, where diners can order the finest omakase in New England, with a view of the large backyard garden through windows that line the entirety of the back wall. Even from the lobby entrance, Yuuri can make out the koi pond, which anchors the eye, and the balance of the garden.

It's lunchtime, but the restaurant is eerily quiet, even though it isn't empty at all. Yuuri steps out of his slippers, his gaze sliding across the patrons. None of the shoji screens are closed off, and it seems like every phone in the restaurant is out.

The poodle jumps up onto the floor of the restaurant before Yuuri can stop her, her body a soft, brown blur that rushes down the aisle of the tables to her owner.

"Makkachin! There you are!"

Yuuri's heart stops in his throat, as every part of him locks up. He knows that voice. He knows that voice better than he's known anything in his life. He can hear it inside of him still, ringing in his ears, in all the parts of him that ever wanted to be filled by music. It rises, swift like a river after a snowmelt, faster than he could have ever predicted, bright and uncontained and so full, Yuuri feels bursting with it, because he's here, _he's here_. It couldn't have been for more than half a second, half a beat of a song that never started. The feeling shimmers like diaphanous silk, before rending itself to pieces, and all Yuuri can feel is the choking wet in his throat, as his mind finally registers what his eyes had been looking towards his entire life.

Viktor Nikiforov sits at the center table of the restaurant on a silk cushion, chopsticks in one hand, and a piece of tonkatsu caught between them. His other is plunged into the softness of Makkachin's coat, his face turned down to smile fondly upon her as he chides her with words too soft for Yuuri to hear from his place at the edge of the floor. Like this, with his face turned to the side, Viktor's profile is like that of a young god cut out of marble, skin impossibly smooth.

Yuuri's never seen him like this before, relaxed and unguarded.

The smile on Viktor's face is the softest thing Yuuri's ever seen him wear.

Yuuri's mouth works around syllables he doesn't quite realize he's forming until the sound is out, vibrating through the air, and it's too late to retract them. "Vi-Viktor? What are you doing here?"

Viktor's gaze is impossibly blue when he turns to look at Yuuri, silver hair falling over one eye. If Yuuri could even move his body at all, he would probably clamp a hand over his mouth, as though he could somehow push back into him the words that had drawn attention to himself. But every part of him is hopelessly frozen in place, except for the thing in his chest that beats wild and loud and graceless.

Viktor looks him over coolly, his expression smooth like glass, for the duration of a quarter note. And then, in the next beat, his face transforms with a vivific smile, bright and bold. "Why, eating this katsu- _don_ , of course!" Viktor waves the piece of tonkatsu that he grips with his chopsticks. "It's very delicious! You should try it."

Viktor tells Yuuri to try his family's katsudon as though it isn't, in fact, his favorite food in the world. As though he did not spend the past three months eating as much of it as he could, to fill up the hollowed-out space within him that music had held.

Yuuri knows Viktor can't possibly have come all the way from Los Angeles or Moscow or London or any of his other homes, to this sleepy, quiet town where nothing ever happens in winter, just to tell him to try his family's katsudon. He's here because of Yuuri, because of what Yuuri did. Because, Yuuri had embarrassed him terribly, stolen from him something that wasn't his.

Yuuri tries to form words, tries to find the right thing to say, to shape his mouth into some semblance of apology. But there's something wrong with his tongue. It seems to be stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Yuuri can't seem to figure out how to curl it into some sort of sound.

Viktor cants his head curiously, his eyes gleaming. " _Wow_!" The word is long and drawn out, and Yuuri almost flinches at the sound of it. "You must really not like katsu- _don_ , huh?" Viktor has seem to mistaken Yuuri's silence for dislike of what he holds in his hand. Yuuri watches mutely as Viktor shoves the piece of katsudon in his mouth and chews with great relish, then swallows. "Oh! By the way, I need you to sign this," says Viktor, and his arm slides forward. Yuuri's eyes track down to the neat, stapled pile of paper under Viktor's fingers. There's quite a lot of neatly printed black text on the front page.

Realization punches through Yuuri's chest, a harsh blow that drives all the air out of his lungs.

Viktor isn't here to eat his family's katsudon, or to give Yuuri the verbal lashing he's so certain he so richly deserves. He's here, because he's taking legal action against Yuuri. Viktor intends to sue him, to make sure Yuuri can never make a single red cent off him, to thoroughly destroy any possibility of Yuuri having a career after this. He'll make it a very public affair, tearing Yuuri down before the entire world, ripping apart any credibility Yuuri might have had as a musician.

Viktor's here, because he wants Yuuri to know that he's personally invested in carrying out Yuuri's destruction.

It wouldn't have been enough to send the paperwork by courier or by his attorney.

Viktor wanted to see the look on Yuuri's face when he delivered it.

Yuuri reels. He feels like he's falling again, dropping from ten thousand feet high in the air, as Viktor watches, the sun of his smile burning up every part of Yuuri, heat rising up to his face and into his eyes.

Yuuri doesn't know how he finds the strength in him to move his feet, how he forces himself to the edge of Viktor's table. But what he's about to do isn't something that can or should be done from ten feet away. Viktor needs to know, needs to see, just how sorry Yuuri is, how terribly he feels that this had happened. Yuuri doesn't even care if he doesn't have a career in music after, if he never again sets foot on a stage in his life. As long as Viktor knows the truth, as long as he understands Yuuri never meant for any of this, maybe Yuuri can somehow manage to find some to survive.

The ground crashes up against his knees, and Yuuri doesn't care if they're red and bruised tomorrow morning. Doesn't care how pathetic it looks, for him to be kneeling on the ground before Viktor like this, forehead pressed to the floor. Doesn't care that in America, this is not how you apologize. Simply saying the words aloud wouldn't be enough. Viktor needs to see it, needs to witness Yuuri's penitence with his own eyes.

There is a sea rising up within him, pressing against the back of Yuuri's closed eyelids. He can taste it, salt at the back of his throat. And when he speaks, his voice is a shaky, quiet thing delivered in pianissimo. "I—I just want to say... how sorry I am about the video. I didn't know that someone was recording. I never wanted to—I never wanted this to happen. I didn't mean for everyone to see it…I'm sorry, Viktor. I'm so sorry."

Yuuri doesn't know if Viktor will accept this, if he will accept _him_ , back bent, forehead pressed to the ground Viktor walks on. He doesn't know if he'll believe him, or if he thinks Yuuri is just trying to manipulate him, to get out of the destruction Viktor intends to mete out.

For a long, shuddering moment, silence stretches out between them. It's nothing like the pause of breath between two notes. It's a crushing, violent thing that sweeps through Yuuri like wildfire. Yuuri is burning, every part of him trembling, too terrified to lift his head.

Silk scrapes across the rough surface of tatami, and Yuuri can feel Viktor moving, fabric whispering as he shifts. Suddenly, something soft and warm brushes under Yuuri's chin and tilts up his face, and everything inside of him spins to a stop. Viktor's fingers are under his chin, an inch away from the thunder of his pulse. Viktor holds him in place, and Yuuri doesn't even know what it is that he feels. He can barely sense the salt burning at the corners of his eyes, can barely even tell if he's breathing or not.

"You don't have to apologize," Viktor says, so softly, and the look in his eyes and the curve of his mouth is the most tender thing Yuuri has ever felt. "I don't mind that everyone saw it," he continues, and Yuuri stops thinking, stops trying to make sense of what's happening, because he doesn't understand any of this at all. Viktor's fingers are a warm, steady anchor around his chin, and Yuuri feels like they are the only thing keeping him from falling apart. "I was very touched, and quite impressed. Why do you think I'm here?"

"I... don't know..." says Yuuri, voice as unsteady as the way he feels. He had been so certain, so sure, that Viktor couldn't possibly have liked what he saw; that he had come here to hurt him, to render him to ash and dust. And Yuuri knows how beautifully Viktor Nikiforov lies. How effortless it is for him, to speak such terrible things with the most beautiful smile. But the smile on his face—the look in his eyes—this isn't the look of someone who wants to destroy. This is the look of something else, and Yuuri doesn't know what it is he's looking at.

"Yuuuuuuri~" Viktor practically sings his name aloud, and Yuuri feels it in his blood. It vibrates through the very root of him, and it feels like Viktor has his fingers set on Yuuri's keys, and knows entirely how to play him. Yuuri should have expected that it would have been this way. After all, didn't Viktor always know just how to surprise him?

Viktor laughs, and in that moment, winter is far, far away.

What comes next is something Yuuri could have never predicted:

"Starting today, I'm going to be your manager and producer," says Viktor, his voice ringing through the treble of Yuuri's shock. "I'll make you win the next _Grand Prix Elite_... _and_ a Grammy."

* * *

 **END NOTES**

 **Glossary**

 _In-ear monitor_ \- An earpiece worn by performers and crew to allow them to hear music on stage.  
 _In ears_ \- Short for "in-ear monitors." This is how live industry pros usually refer to them colloquially.  
 _Monitor engineer_ \- The sound engineer that controls the in-ear monitor levels  
 _Intercom_ \- A headset closed radio circuit that allows production crew to communicate  
 _A &R agent_ \- Artist & Repertoire agent. These are the people who scout for new talent and also work with artists to develop their music. Usually hired by labels.  
 _Arpeggio_ \- Notes of a chord played in a very melodious, sweeping succession. Often connected with quite a lot of other arpeggios for dramatic effect on piano.  
 _Pianissimo_ \- Very soft and quiet.

Thank you guys so much for reading! I can't begin to express how grateful I am that you managed to get through so many, many words. I'm also _especially_ grateful to my editor, powerandpathos, for the countless hours of editing and chatting with me about this fic. Without her, I wouldn't have had the inspiration to put down a single word! (So go check out her fics, too. They're _awesome_.)

For those of you wondering, I've set this entire fic in the United States to localize Viktor and Yuuri within one music market. The global music market is generally very much regionally separated. Because American music dominates global music repertoires, I felt it would be more effective to localize them in the states.

In this fic, both Viktor and Yuuri are first-generation Russian/Japanese-American (so they grew up in the U.S. and are American citizens). ^^

* * *

 **If you liked this fic, please favorite/follow or share with your friends! Or leave a comment if you'd like to see more.**

Thanks so much for reading! You can find me on Tumblr (subtextually) if you'd like to chat! ^^

You can also find me, and more of this fic, posted at AO3 under sub_textual!


End file.
